SOY X SOY asks what it means to be Américan in latest exhibition at Cultural Arts Center
Editor's Note: The print version incorrectly spells the name of SOY X SOY. We regret the error that occurred during the editing process and not in the reporting.
What does it mean to be American?
“Reclaiming América,” the latest exhibition the the Savannah Cultural Arts Center Gallery by local Latin/Hispanic/Native American artist collective SOY X SOY (pronounced “soy como soy,” which translates to “I am how I am”), is asking that very question. The answers are as diverse as its members.
“There is a lot of talk [about] what it is to be an American,” noted photographer and founding member Adriana Iris Boatwright. “To us, being an American is all the way from Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, all the way to Canada.”
SOY X SOY was founded organically over the first half of 2022 from conversations between a number of local creatives with backgrounds matching the eventual membership of the group. Those talks ultimately resulted in “EL SALÓN,” both the group's first exhibition at the Cultural Arts Center Gallery and its first show overall, in October of last year. It was a blockbuster, an event that artist A.J. Perez, aka Alexis Javier, says was the space’s most attended gallery show ever.
“Looking back at the past year, we have an energy that I’ve never experienced,” Perez, who is also one of the founders of Sulfur Studios and ARTS Southeast, proclaimed. There’s a what-are-they-gonna-do-next feel about the group, he added.
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Working together has created something bigger
Between then and now, SOY X SOY has held two celebration-style art events, one at Savoy Society and another at Troupial, and collaborated on numerous projects, such as covering the building adjacent to Bull Street Taco with a massive mural depicting the singer Selena.
But coming back to the space where they hosted their coming out party almost a year ago, the collective is decidedly more focused and more deeply ingrained into the Savannah art scene. They’ve gone from being something of a mystery to a showcase for some of todays most notable local artists, folks like Perez and Boatwright, as well as such local luminaries as Tafy LaPlanche, Autumn Gary and José Ray.
“We have artists [who] can stand on their own and put a show on their own, and do their own thing,” noted Boatright. “They are great artists that can sell their work for thousands and thousands of dollars.
“But there is something that happens when you put all these people with the same interests, with the same energy, to create something just bigger,” she added. “In reality, all of us know we can do it on our own. Doing it together has created something. It’s like a force and an energy that’s completely organic.”
For “Reclaiming América,” artists in the collective were given free rein to interpret the subject as they saw fit. The result is that the definition of “American” is re-examined with each new piece.
Boatwirght, for example, created a fictional movie poster for a romantic comedy called “Taíno Forest,” a reference to the now eradicated Caribbean culture, where she imagines the music, dance and language of the Indigenous people who once populated her birthplace of Puerto Rico.
Gary, meanwhile, created her piece based on the inspiration she received from a Mohawk medicine woman while on a visit up to Malone, New York. And LaPlanche looked back on her personal journey to create “Don’t Grill Me Son,” a digital portrait taking visual cues from the wrappers that housed the Linden’s cookies she got as a dessert in middle school.
“My mom was a school lunch helper for many years, and she would always give me those cookies whenever she had a shift,” LaPlanche explained of her piece for the show. “I was a food stamp kid growing up, and being an Afro-Latina and being on food stamps was kind of like the stereotype. It was already associated with me, regardless of people knowing or now.
“[But] it was something that never really bothered me, because at the end of the day I knew it was a way for her to provide for me,” she continued. “And her stealing the cookies was when she really couldn’t give me anything.”
'A bird with two wings'
Boatwright and the members of SOY X SOY understand that what they’re presenting may be controversial for some, but to her and her fellow featured artists, it’s the kind of controversy that adds to the conversation in a positive way.
“We know that a lot of information had been oppressed, destroyed, eradicated,” she noted. “We can no longer live in a state of ignorance and accept it. So, what does it mean to be an American?”
“People are going to come to it with their own preconceived notions,” added LaPlanche. “That’s just something we already knew was gonna happen. The hope is that they see all different viewpoints of that, and maybe see something that conflicts with what they originally thought.”
“There are a lot of us Latinos that were not raised in the countries where [our heritage originates],” Boatwright said. “I am lucky enough to have been born and raised [in Puerto Rico]. [But] a lot of them grew up in Iowa, Kansas... and never had a chance to make a connection with that Latin culture. And now, they are part of this collective, and are for the first time [they] are making that connection as artists and as people and as individuals, and they are discovering sides to themselves that they never knew.
“Am I proud to be Puerto Rican? A thousand percent yes,” she continued. “But the bottom line is that I am not just that now. I’m am now a bird with two wings.”
If You Go >>
What: SOY X SOY's “Reclaiming América”
Where: Savannah Cultural Arts Center Gallery, 201 Montgomery St.
When: Aug. 11 through Sept. 23; there will be an opening reception beginning at 5:30 p.m., Aug. 11, with an artist talk at 6:30 p.m.
Info: savannahga.gov/1036/Gallery
Another chance to see SOY X SOY artists >>
Hospice Savannah will host its annual Summer Nights Party from 6 to 9 p.m., Aug. 17, at Soho South, 12 W. Liberty St.
Peter Roberts of Location Gallery curated artwork from SOY X SOY for the exhibition, "Colores Calidos," which will be on display and available for auction. The online auction is already open at app.galabid.com/colorescalidos/items.
Proceeds from the event support the healing arts of music and massage therapy offered by Hospice Savannah.
Tickets for Colores Calidos are $45 each, and available online at hospicesavannah.org/summernights.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: Savannah's SOY X SOY collective reclaims América through art exhibition
